The marriage failed. The company thrived
Couple behind San Rafael’s EO Products have picked up lessons about their products, relationships — and life — along the way
It might be hard to imagine a 45,000square-foot “Star Wars” studio of George Lucas being converted into the production facility for an organic cosmetics company — one that features products like a mint-and-coconut soap and sulfate-free shampoos and conditioners.
There is something implausible about the optics of it, if nothing else. Then again, there is something implausible about San Rafael’s EO Products, beginning with its homegrown origins and the way that, more than two decades later, the company is run by Brad Black and Susan Griffin-Black, the couple who head it. Make that former couple. Yes, this is more than just a story about an entrepreneurial pair who, out of the humble beginnings of their San Francisco home, built what would become a $50 million enterprise, specializing in body, skin and hair care based on botanically derived essential oils. It is the story of a couple who did all that while also going through a divorce.
Michael Funk, former CEO of United Natural Foods, among the world’s largest wholesale distributors of natural and organic products, has known the couple from the beginning of their relationship — they met over a glass of wine at Friar Tuck’s in Nevada City — and says he has
always been impressed by Brad and Susan’s “drive and integrity.” In a recent phone interview, Funk said he had seen “thousands of small suppliers coming through the door, and five years later many of them aren’t around. You never know if who you meet is going to be one of those stories. Given where the two of them came from, which was a startup that didn’t have much financial backing, makes it even less likely.”
Perhaps had Funk known that the couple was whipping up a foaming shower gel containing an alternative to sodium laurel sulfate — an ingredient that some studies have linked to cancer, but without which it is difficult to create a lather — in the sort of 3-gallon stainless steel stockpots that you make soup in, he would have been even more skeptical about the odds of EO Products lasting over the long haul. (Black compares that experiment to an “I Love Lucy” moment.)
But when the couple went from selling to mom-and-pop boutiques to winning a Whole Foods account in 2000, their position in the natural marketplace was solidified. Eventually the company became a cornerstone of the $3.7 trillion global wellness industry and paved the way for such competitors as the Honest Co. and Eos.
But let’s start at the beginning.
The couple met in 1989, when they exchanged business cards — she was working in the U.S. offices of Neal’s Yard Remedies, a British organic skin care company; he was designing and manufacturing clothing made of organic cotton — and began having lunch. They were both in a series of on-and-off relationships during this period; Susan was recently divorced with a young son. The two were fast friends from the beginning, but it would take a few years before they began dating.
In 1995, the couple married and started EO Products in their Potrero Hill garage. (EO stands for essential oils, which are found in the seeds, bark, stems, roots, flowers and other parts of plants.) In the well-established tradition of hippie entrepreneurs and based on Griffin-Black’s interest in aromatherapy, they created a collection of four essential-oil mixes (“Relax,” “Refresh,” “Love” and “Calm”) for the holiday gift guide at Bloomingdale’s, where Susan had some professional contacts from her earlier clothing boutique business.
Their instincts — and the unexpected success of those oil mixes — told them there was a market that no one was fully exploiting. “We didn’t look at anyone else,” Griffin-Black said. “We just knew the ingredients we didn’t want to use. My own experience led the way more than the marketplace.” (Though, across the country in rural Maine, another hippie entrepreneur was having a similar epiphany: Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt’s Bees, was blending her boyfriend’s leftover beeswax into a lip balm.)
The Blacks eventually moved their work space from their garage and acquired HFI Labs, a private label manufacturer with the equipment and technological knowhow to enable them to expand their product line. “We were always too small, or didn’t have enough money to partner with other manufacturers to drive innovation,” Black said. “We weren’t trust fund kids.”
They were married for 11 years; during that period they went from working on their own to hiring 35 employees. (Today they have 121.) They have a son, Mark, from Susan’s previous marriage, who is now in a rock band, and a daughter, Lucy, who was born in 1996. The couple share a mutual professional acumen — with GriffinBlack, 62, being more an Earth mother-type and Black, 55, the one who keeps a tight, “Shark Tank”-like rein on things — as well as a raft of personal eccentricities.
Here’s where things get interesting. For one thing, the couple’s relationship continued to flourish after they divorced in 2007: As cochief executives, they continued to spend every day in each other’s presence, doing all of the things that married couples commit to: parenting, splitting finances, meaningfully communicating, confessing, forgiving, even occasionally touching. For another, and here’s the really curious part, EO Products took off in unexpected ways.
Whereas the usual story line would suggest that a divorce in such a situation would spell professional disaster — Michael Funk says that in his fortysomething years he’s rarely seen it work — EO not only survived the Blacks’ very conscious uncoupling but gathered steam.
The line expanded and popped up in retail stores like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Target without any compromises made to transparency about their ingredients. “What I admire about EO is their commitment to using essential oils in spite of their being more expensive,” Quimby of Burt’s Bees said. “They’re willing to go for that level of quality.”
These days, EO Products is one of the last large independently owned organic beauty companies; most of the cozy-sounding brands out there, like Kiss My Face, Burt’s Bees and Jason Organics, are owned by giant corporations. “They helped define a body care category that you’d define as ultra premium,” Funk said. “They’re a leading brand in their space, and the two of them appear to be a healthy management team. It’s very impressive to witness that over the years.”
Five years ago the Blacks launched Everyone, a mass-market line. The idea for it came from Mark, who wanted a more budget-friendly option for him and his bandmates. (EO’s branded products range from $2 to $125.) Everyone has 75 products, some of them gallon-size, ranging from $7 to $12; they incorporate a lower percentage of pure essential oils and are sold mostly at Target.
Black, for all his talk of the business being “a living, breathing entity” is not beyond the candid throwaway remark that he would sell in a minute for the right price. Griffin-Black seems more attached to the substitute family they have created. “It’s been a lifelong journey to create a company that we wanted to work for that infuses our values into what we do and who we do it with every day,” she said.
Neither has remarried, though both have been in a series of relationships since their breakup. (Griffin-Black has been with the same partner for nearly five years.) When asked whether it would shake things up if one of them did remarry, Griffin-Black has a ready response.
“I don’t think it would change the dynamic in a negative way,” she said confidently. “We are each other’s advisers and confidantes — including in each other’s romantic relationships. We’re a package deal at this point because we have kids together and we work together.”